Over the years, this blog has been about many different things related to software development with Microsoft technologies. Since my current role focuses on Dynamics CRM / XRM, that's what it's primarily about right now.

I've been pretty quite on the blogging front lately. Every once in a while, I get the opportunity to work on something a little meatier than writing demo code. Almost all of my time over the last month or so has been spent working on a couple...

UPDATE: Fixed the embedded video. Have you ever wished you could get JavaScript Intellisense for the Virtual Earth Map Control in Visual Studio 2008? I have, so I came up with a solution and started a codeplex project! I just recorded a short...

IMPORTANT NOTE: This developer dinner will not be at a Microsoft facility. Please make sure you take note of this. Thursday, January 15, 2009 6:00 PM - Thursday, January 15, 2009 8:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada) Welcome Time: 5:30 PM Reston...

DISCLAIMER: This is technically unsupported, but works. If that makes you cringe, then walk away. If you read it and think it will work for you, then make the decision that's best for you.
Example scenarios:
“I have a a field in an entity...

UPDATE: I've updated the code to use the workaround described here . If you downloaded this code before May 2nd, 2008 @ 7:30 PM EST, then you might download it again. The URL is the same. I’ve update my primary Virtual Earth (VE) map...

UPDATE: Fixed a few bugs in the downloadable sample including one where it wouldn’t work in Office 365 based CRM Online subscriptions. Edited some text in the post for clarity.
UPDATE2: Added some text about how to get this working for Windows...

UPDATE (04JUN2013): If you need to evolve this sample to support a one to many relationship represented as a multi-select, I like this multi-select control which can be themed with jQuery UI themes . Another scenario from a customer: We want to...

jQuery is one of the most popular javascript libraries used by ASP.NET developers. In fact, jQuery ships with Visual Studio 2010. It is in the “Scripts” folder of a new “ASP.NET Web Application” or “ASP.NET MVC 2 Web Application” project template...

UPDATE (18APR2013): Updated AuthenticateAsync() extension method to handle both IFD and CRM Online authentication. Now, the code in HelloCRM will work regardless of whether you point it to an IFD or CRM Online Organization Service. All you...

This is probably the most promised, but never published blog post on my list of potential posts. I’ve managed to convince enough CRM developers I’ve run into that they should get some test driven development with unit testing religion. Especially...

UPDATE: Please review the comments for this post. There is a better, easier way to do this using OAuth that works with both the SOAP and REST/OData service.
Sometimes you need to run ASP.NET code outside of Dynamics CRM to achieve your goals. This...

UPDATE: Added reference to another blog post that does a great job of going into the cross-document / cross-domain issue. Fixed some grammar/typos.
UPDATE2: You might also be interested in my newer post: Cross domain calls from JavaScript
I’ve...

UPDATE: There's a known issue with the LINQPad Plugin for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Office 365 authentication. I cover a workaround here .
Using FetchXML is necessary in many situations with CRM 2011. Using FetchXML becomes even more necessary...

A while back, I wrote a post called Building an editable grid for CRM 2011 . The goal of the post was to give you the necessary knowledge to know how to write the code to build an editable grid. Since then, someone introduced me to jqGrid...

In this screencast, I show you how to draw a polygon on a Virtual Earth map and save it using ASP.NET AJAX, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), LINQ to SQL, and the new geography data type in SQL Server 2008. Screencast: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts...

First, let me apologize since I promised to make this recording available almost two months ago. I was trying to get the recording uploaded to the same Live Meeting servers as my other webcasts. Needless to say, I had some challenges. ...

Looking for free introductory training on the .NET 3.5 SP1 & ASP.NET MVC? Head over to Jonathan Carter's blog to get all the details on the .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit RTM . What will you find? Information and links to download...

GOAL: Simplify referencing JavaScript libraries from CRM forms for code-centric developer types like me. I have always been a fan of “code beside” JavaScript files that contain all my main code for a corresponding HTML page. For example, if I have...

UPDATE: A great majority of people never look at an app unless it is free. Even though the manual rate lookup feature of my app is free through trial mode and never times out, I decided to publish an identical version of the app with trial mode...

Robert Levy from the Surface team and Anson Tsao from the WPF team gave a great session on: Multi-Touch on Microsoft Surface and Windows 7 for .NET Developers The session is definitely worth watching if you are interested in building multi-touch apps...

In this screencast, I build off of the concepts shown in my previous screencast and show you how to render a polygon on a Virtual Earth map using REST, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), LINQ to SQL, and the new geography data type in SQL Server...

I've given a number of presentations on Virtual Earth development over the last couple years. The first thing ASP.NET WebForms developers say to me is how bummed they are that they have to write JavaScript. That's understandable. ASP...

I just came across this update to the .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit from Jonathan Carter . If you've seen my ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview webcast and are looking for the code, then you will want to download the kit. I used the kit as...

I am happy to announce that we have a new release of the Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper to bring Intellisense in sync with the new Virtual Earth Map Control 6.1 . In addition to 6.1 compatibility, we also made the following enhancements...

The ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview is a new release that provides new functionality being added to ASP.NET 3.5 and ADO.NET in 2008. This release delivers a set of new features that target: Enabling High Productivity Data Scenarios - including MVC, Entity...